Let’s Get Started

Welcome to my inaugural post.  This is going to be my biking blog, with a smattering here and there of various pearls of wisdom garnered over the past 48 years.  Feel free to chime in at any time, as I am fairly open to the opinions of others, provided they acknowledge my superior intellect and are compatible with my world view.

As is typical blogging etiquette, I am electing to remain anonymous, although it won’t take much in the way of investigative techniques to track me down if you are familiar with the area.  If you do happen to track me down, no problem; but right up front I deny any paternity, it was not our dog that got into your trash, and while I may have implied that you are stoopid, I probably didn’t mean it; and it certainly isn’t anything personal.

The basics:  we (me, wife, kids, cats, and dog) live just outside of Lewisberry PA, which sits halfway between York and Harrisburg.  The area is amazingly bike friendly, with lots of winding back roads and plenty of berm on the larger ones.  Starting in York and going well into
Maryland is an awesome rail-trail, and I’m pining to try out some others in the central PA region.

I drive a desk during the week with an often boring but somewhat challenging government job.  Fortunately, I work with some pretty nice people who both respect and understand me.  My other activities involve cutting and splitting wood to heat our home, being pretty active in church, and pretending to oversee the raising of three rather bright kids.  I used to be a competitive rower, and I expect that there will be some references as rowing compares to biking.  I hope to take up rowing again in a few years.  I also coach soccer, although I expect that will end in a few years as the kids grow out of it.  Still, I have found that to be a growing experience.

Biking:  Many, many years ago I got married and retired from rowing.  In order to maintain my sanity and keep in shape, I bought first a used
Fuji and then a used Cannondale road bike, which I rode several nights a week.  After a few years we moved and I was able to take up rowing again, and biking fell by the wayside.  Still a few years later the demands of fatherhood put the kibosh to rowing and I retired once again.  Fast forward to 2005, and I started to realize a little, and just a little at that, free time.  So through the miracle of eBay I bought a Bontrager Privateer mountain bike without knowing much about bikes by this time, and started to hit the streets.  2006 saw my schedule open up even more in the late spring and summer, which allowed me to get even more serious logging some miles and losing some weight.

So there you have the condensed version.